How to prevent WhatsApp from sharing your data with Facebook

With its new terms and privacy policy, WhatsApp has started sharing data with Facebook to make its advertising more effective. This step-by-step guide to help you stop WhatsApp from sharing your data with Facebook.

WhatsApp and Facebook will begin to talk about us behind our backs. The recent changes to the terms of service was announced in a blog post on the official blog. Accepting the new policy gives permission for the two platforms to exchange your personal information, meaning mainly that WhatsApp will send data to Facebook such as your phone number.

The information will obviously not be made public, but will remain on the servers of the company led by Mark Zuckerberg. WhatsApp is trying to get a better profile of its individual users: by connecting phone numbers with users’ profiles on Facebook, the social network will be able to suggest potential friends more effectively, benefiting end users but also the site itself, which will have a greater number of interconnections between its members.

How to prevent WhatsApp from sharing your data

According to the blog post, data obtained through this change of privacy policy will help Facebook display more relevant ads. However, it is possible to disable the sharing of information by opening WhatsApp, going to your Settings, and under Account, toggling the switch next to ‘Share my account info’. Then tap ‘Don’t Share’ in the dialogue that will next appear.Facebook will not be the only party to benefit from this change.

WhatsApp is exploring ways of ensuring that users and businesses can communicate with each other using the messaging platform, sharing information on orders, transactions and appointments, notifications of deliveries and shipments, updates on products and services and marketing. WhatsApp is about to become something other than a messaging app, and is asking its users for authorization to proceed.